What's a "Complex Medicine" floor?

resumecpr · Feb 12, 2011

More like long-term acute care. Some patients will have tracheostomies, g/pegtube feeds, vents, drips like cardiazem, dopamine but non-titrating. Lots of wound care.

ImThatGuy, BSN, RN · Feb 12, 2011

It's complex med-surg.

Fribblet · Feb 12, 2011

I have no idea what the answer to your question is, but is your user name at all referencing the Kids in the Hall sketch?

Florencebyondthepale · Feb 12, 2011

I worked in a unit called complex care and it was essentially a med/surg unit that focused on patients with brain injuries, strokes, traumatic injuries, and long term wound healing issues. Patients would often come to us to work up to being ready for rehab. We had physical therapy working with many of our patients. Like resumecpr mentioned, it was a lot of trach care, g/peg tube care, LOTS of complex wound care (wound vacs, stage IV pressure ulcer care, some peritoneal dialysis, etc. We did not have patients on drips or vent patients. Those patients went to ICU. We did have a lot of patients on TPN and it wasn't uncommon to give blood transfusions. We also took overflow from the other regular med/surg units.

It was my first job out of school and it was a great opportunity to get comfortable with some basic skills. It could also be extremely draining in that many of the patients were total care and could not perform many ADL's independently. If I had a patient who could not feed themselves and no assistance from an aid/tech, feeding that patient while managing my other 3-4 patients could become a nightmare. Some patients had dressing changes 2-3 times a day, many patients were on pain meds every 3-4 hours (we rarely had patients with pca's). Combine these things with trach care and tube feedings and you had to be really on top of your time management. But again, this type of unit offers a great opportunity to do some things you may not get to do in other areas. I would definitely want to know what kind of support staff works with the unit (we had wonderful physical therapists/occupational therapists/speech therapists). How many cnas are working per shift, what the nurse-to-patient ratio is, etc. before I would take a job in a complex care unit.